We have some 3D models of the USB trinkeys available to download from our 3D parts github repo. These models feature a 2mm thick PCB and various components like the 35mm slide potentiometer, cherry MX switch and a rotary encoder. You do not need Fusion 360 to use these 3D models. The STEP file format is widely used in CAD applications with solid modeling capabilities. For folks who may use TinkerCAD, a STL file is also available.
For folks who are curious how I make these, there’s a video I put together, Layer by Layer tutorial (a few years ago) that walks through my workflow.
The rendered silkscreens are generated by Eagle and Fusion 360. I ran into issues with the bottom silkscreen so I had to resort to exporting a PNG image of the bottom silk and remapping it using the edit decal feature within the edit PCB workspace inside Fusion 360. I couldn’t quite figure out what is causing this issue. Rest assured, the silkscreen preview in Eagles manufacturing tab does a good job of exporting a decent hi-res image of the silkscreen. I’m still using the legacy Eagle PCB > Fusion 360 from Eagle 9.3 because the latest version of Eagle does away with the ability to “Replace Component Body”. The newer 3D PCB from Eagle and Fusion 360 does not have this feature and favors linking 3D models through their managed library business.
Creating animations inside of Fusion is relatively easy but requires a bit of understanding how to use assembly joints. I tend to rotate the boards in the center of the origin but this can be problematic with odd shaped PCBs. Each PCB with components tends to be unique and there isn’t a cookie cutter way for me to make these. With these USB Trinkeys, I thought it’d be interesting to animate the components, such as the Potentiometer Slider, Cherry MX Switch and the Rotary Encoder. Since two of the four USB Trinkeys require soldering their main component, I felt animating them coming on and off not only looked cool, but makes sense.
I hope folks find these interesting and useful, feel free to use them in your projects.
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